Marianne Fritz - The Weight of Things

THE BEST MOTHER OF ALL

Berta’s creations, Rudolf and Little Berta, were buried. Only that other creation, Berta Schrei, remained alive. And when the elder Berta saw that Little Berta, as she lay there still, bore no resemblance whatsoever to the Madonna from the painting, even though she’d finally been salvaged from the molding hands of life, she understood then that her delusion, founded on the casual resemblance of an image and a face, had been dispelled the moment it was carried out, and that reality was now spiraling into absurdity. Rudolf looked nothing like the Christ child either.

Berta Schrei roared at the Madonna and the Christ child. Her yearning for an ideal, her wish to shelter Little Berta and Rudolf from the weight of things, had ended in a madwoman’s double murder and her own failed suicide.

“How does it feel to be forty?” Wilhelm asked, and stroked Berta’s stringy mane, running the index finger of his right hand over the arrow-straight part in her hair.

Berta giggled and said, “I really need to go back to the hairdresser,” and tried with a jittery movement of her hand to make her girlish haircut look more womanly.

“Curls always look good on you. On the other hand, a hairstyle without curls also has a certain appeal. Curls all the time, perhaps that’s a bit much? What do you think?”

Berta felt the time had come to smile bashfully like a girl and turn her eyes away from Wilhelm’s gaze. Meanwhile, the Wise Little Mother had been waving her hands protectively, each gesture a bit more emphatic than the one before. But no one in Ward 66 paid much attention to these efforts to alert them to what was happening, and this indifference was yet another sign, to the old woman, that it was time to teach Life , the intruder, a definitive lesson. She stood up from her bed, shuffled over to Wilhelm, and stood there for a while in silence, folding her hands slowly and deliberately and staring down at Berta’s head; with the meekest look in her repertoire of meek looks, she purred at Wilhelm, “No doubt, no doubt,” but with a gently threatening undertone. Wilhelm at last deigned to look at her, disconcerted.

“Our Mother Fortress, the best of all mothers, has brushed Berta’s hair straight. Her hair no longer knows the winding, wending, crimping, curving folds or furrows of the wound, Life. It has achieved a state of peace, it has come to rest. Isn’t that right, dear Berta? Your hair has come to rest. Is that not so? Has it not achieved peace? Has it not come to rest?” Berta looked at the Wise Little Mother, and her body swelled with guilt. Wilhelm waited in vain for the long sigh that he knew so well. But it died away before it could escape her.

Wilhelm grasped Berta’s upper arm, gave her a soft but determined shake, and looked at her through the eyes of Wilhelm the returnee, a man who had tried, at the behest of his comrade, Private First Class Rudolf, his first and only friend, to explain the war to a certain Berta Faust. But when he stood there before her then, on that first day of June, in 1945, he got the feeling somehow that there was nothing to explain, and Wilhelmine’s prying inquiries had burdened more than just his eardrums.

THEN I WILL LOOK AFTER YOUR BERTA

“Wilhelm!” Several times on the journey from Denmark to Frankfurt on the Oder, Private First Class Rudolf shouted his friend’s name, with unexpected vehemence, taking him firmly by the upper arm.

“Wilhelm! Do you remember Berta’s address? Do you?”

Wilhelm nodded placidly; Rudolf shook him and demanded he recite it.

“Where does she live? Tell me right now! Where does Berta live?”

Only when Wilhelm had laid his calming hand on Rudolf’s thigh and answered his question in a tranquil voice did Rudolf begin to breathe easily again.

“Berta Faust. Allerseelengasse, building 13, fourth floor, apartment 12, Donaublau.”

“Exactly. You’ve got it. That’s very good. You have to pay close attention to everything I tell you. You have to look at Berta with my eyes, otherwise you won’t understand her. It’s important. Whoever sees Berta with my eyes will know that he has to protect her from all the filthy people who want to abuse her and disgrace her. She’s a child, Wilhelm. Even if her body is soft and warm, not awkward and bony like it used to be. She had no idea what men and women did together, I had to teach her that, the only men she knew were her father and brothers. The morning after, when she woke up, she looked at me like a baby. Curious. Trusting. Like a newborn suckling, imagining things would stay this peaceful forever. So curious, so trusting — she was an easy mark! Not even a child is so naïve. And yet I did it — you see? I did it with a baby!” And Rudolf’s face clouded over, and he had to force away his thoughts. He reached for Wilhelm’s upper arm again, then, and exclaimed, like a man doubting his own sanity: “And just because I played her the ‘Aquarelles’ and the ‘Blue Danube’!” He shook his head and laughed with rage.

“Do you get it? ‘The Blue Danube’: Strauss, of all things. Do you understand me?”

Wilhelm laid his calming hand again on the Private First Class’s leg and said, “It can’t go on much longer.”

And again Rudolf turned, again he took his friend’s arm, again he shook him and made his plea, as desperate as it was unnecessary: “If they get me, Wilhelm! I mean if they get me! You’re sure you’re listening to me?”

Wilhelm nodded and said, “There’s no need to worry.”

“Wilhelm. Swear to me. Cross your heart. Look me in the eyes. If they get me, do you know what you have to do then?” Wilhelm acceded for the umpteenth time. He knew that Rudolf would never rest until he’d taken his hand and sworn and promised something that to Wilhelm went without saying.

“Fine. I swear it. If they get you, then I’ll take care of your Berta,” and he smiled at his friend good-naturedly. “But honestly, Rudolf, it’s an unnecessary and ridiculous thing to swear. I think it’s more likely they’ll get me. That would make more sense. If I’m gone, no one will notice.”

Rudolf brushed off his objection. The gesture was curt, but brimming with contempt. “Go tell Goebbels that. Maybe he’ll see the contradiction between making babies and waging war … You’ll never be a proper soldier, you know. You can’t use logic to win a game of chance. Not your kind of logic, in any case!” Private First Class Rudolf began to pontificate as if he were once again Music Teacher Rudolf, in the days when he’d pronounced upon the arcana of harmony before his students’ baffled eyes: “The front has its own logic, and it’s as simple as can be. Them or us. Period. If a single one of them is left, that’s one too many. Whoever grasps that has grasped the essence of the matter. Do you see, Wilhelm? This is the secret of politics by other means. ” And Rudolf chucked his friend on the chin, snickered, and concluded, with something that nearly resembled mirth: “No, you’ll never grasp that. You could never understand a thing like that.”

Wilhelm answered gently, “If I understood it, I would stop it.”

At this new instance of Wilhelmish logic, Rudolf cackled and threw back his head.

“That is what I would do. If it had a logic, I mean. Because in that case, a person could stop it by being logical. That seems reasonable,” Wilhelm continued.

Now it was Rudolf who patted Wilhelm’s thigh: “You clearly think madness has no logic. But that’s a decisive misapprehension! Everything has its logic. Everything , understand? But let’s leave that aside for now …”

Wilhelm was well aware of his friend’s disdain for his inferior intelligence, and knew Rudolf considered any attempt to think about the war to be far too difficult a task for Wilhelm’s brain. Because he was so proud of his friendship with this clever man — a music teacher in a secondary school, not just a common trade school, but one where Latin and Greek, French and English were taught — he was able to forget the insults Rudolf was wont to lob at him each time Wilhelm made the least attempt at independent thought.